Planned changes to Realmgate in preparation for Season 6

Towards the end of last year and the start of this one, we have been following your discussions regarding Alliances and how to best react to your feedback before Season 6.

We're aware that the current Alliance situation is dissatisfactory to many players, but we feel it's not as simple as "make every effort to completely remove alliances" either, since this has been met with a heavy resistance from the community as well.
So although we would first like to try fixing this issue on a fundamental level, we are all on the same page that something needs to be done.

Right now, the current Caerleon Realmgate allows players to get swift action and move around the map very quickly. This also creates a huge power projection, where you have a large Alliance that can be pretty much everywhere in the world on very short notice.
What also makes this even worse is that you don’t always have to be out in the world all the time to create this effect we see, since it’s theoretically possible many players may not even try to engage these large alliance battles.

Our current view is that we need to create ways to enjoy Albion's endgame without having to be in a huge Alliance, and to create room for smaller Alliances and Guilds to exist.
In our opinion, this can only be properly resolved with a geography change, but that doesn't mean we have to wait for a big rework. Our mid-term plan is to modify the way the portal system works to make it harder for alliances to be present everywhere in the Outlands within a few minutes.

What we plan to try out and test from the end of Season 5 until the end of Season 6 at least, is to replace the portal exits in the lower and mid Outlands with portal exits that lead to the Royal Cities. Below you can find a summary of this.

Disclaimer: Proposed plans and details may still change.

Eltharyon schrieb:

Portal Changes

Each of the Royal Cities (Fort Sterling, Thetford, Martlock, Bridgewatch, Lymehurst) gains an Outland portal of its own

The existing portal exits in the Outlands are split between the cities in the following way (see the attached map below):

Caerleon retains all 4 Portal exits in Mercia and the easternmost Portal exit in Cumbria (Alderwood)

You will lose your current lock if you return to the Royal continent using any city portal

You will gain a city's portal lock if you return to the Royal continent using that city's portal or when respawning there after death in the Outlands

Respawn Changes

The ability to respawn "in nearest city" is replaced with an ability to respawn "in last visited city"

The ability to respawn "at nearest territory" is removed, but you can set any territory tower as a home.

You can still respawn at a home. However, when you've set a home, you will lose your home binding when you choose to respawn "in last visited city".

Special Island Move

During a special transition period of one month, you will be able to move your personal and guild islands to a city of your choice

Each island may only be moved a single time and the move is wasted if not used during this transition period

Connection example

Our primary goal is to test our idea of creating more physical distance between the fighting guilds to create niches in which small and medium guilds can exist without facing the largest guilds all the time. The new portal system encourages guilds to choose one out of six cities as their base, so they gain some control over who they wish to compete with.

A note on biome preservation: of course it would be great if each royal city connected directly to portals of its own biome. In the current map layout, the biomes are heavily spread, however, so each city would gain access to multiple parts of the Outlands. This contradicts the key idea we want to be testing, so we've opted to prefer locality over biome preservation. While this certainly does not create as many economic trade incentives between the cities as it could, we believe the activity of the different guilds in each section of the Outlands will create interesting business opportunities nonetheless. We would certainly be revisiting the biome connections of each royal city in future.

We look forward to receiving your thoughts and feedback, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you the best of luck whatever your plans are for this final invasion weekend!

Quick clarification on the proposed portal lock changes, best explained by an example:

Say you use the Fort Sterling portal to the Outlands

You now have a "Fort Sterling portal lock" - this means if you want to go *to* the Outlands, you can only do so via Fort Sterling

However, you can use any portal *from* the Outlands back to the Royals

If you use a portal *from* the Outlands to the Royals, your portal lock is changed to whatever city this portal *from* the Outlands to the Royals takes you

Hence, if you want to change your Fort Sterling lock to, say, a Caerleon lock, you'd have to go to the Outlands from Fort Sterling, then walk to any Outland exit portal that leads to Caerleon and use it. This then instantly changes your portal lock to Caerleon

Due to the above, you cannot simply be anywhere in the Outlands instantly by using fast travel between the Royal cities. For example, if I have a Fort Sterling lock and fast travel to Martlock, I will not be able to use the Martlock portal *to* the Outlands as I am still locked to Fort Sterling. As explained above, to change my Fort Sterling lock to Martlock, I'd have to travel to the Outlands from Fort Sterling and walk to a Martlock Outland *exit* and use that, which would then change my lock to Martlock.

Also would fast travel be removed from the game? As one could just put sets in every city and sit in Caerleon and wait until there's a call and just fast travel to whatever Royal City they need to leave from.

Also would fast travel be removed from the game? As one could just put sets in every city and sit in Caerleon and wait until there's a call and just fast travel to whatever Royal City they need to leave from.

I think Caer should not be in cumbria and the continents be more spread, more smaller zones in between like islands to make the travel more of a need, because going through alderwood to elmwood is way to short.

Also would fast travel be removed from the game? As one could just put sets in every city and sit in Caerleon and wait until there's a call and just fast travel to whatever Royal City they need to leave from.

What I am concerned with is currently to transport high value mats you have to move through red zones to get to the correct royal city to refine. Can we see some changes in the royals as well to combat this. As it stands right now travelling between royal cities in yellow and blue is the same amount of zones as going through reds. Eliminating high risk high reward values for refining and crafting.

Also would fast travel be removed from the game? As one could just put sets in every city and sit in Caerleon and wait until there's a call and just fast travel to whatever Royal City they need to leave from.

did you not read?

I didn't read please point out.

@Wadefu@Robinhoodrs if i understand correctly the lock from a city last indefinitely and you have to move trough the bz to change city locks

I think what robin is saying is that you can sit in caerleon and use naked travel to get to lymhurst, martlock, any city.

Unless i'm misunderstanding something,
such as you go through martlock portal -
you return through a martlock portal, you won't be able to fast travel to lymhurst and use that portal.
you would have to travel to browngrass run across anglia to get to the lymhurst portal to reset your lock to lymhurst.

I dont think it will be really good with todays online. Decentralization of economy will grow up all prices. It will be more runs between cities and it is not so good because it is the most boring thing in this game

Does it make any difference if 100 people have to ride a horse to bridgewatch and then jump through the realm gate there? Do you realize that some people play much less than they could, just because the content is not satisfying (e.g. because it's beyond their community scale) ?

Zerg N+1 problem...
Of course you can try tackling the problem this way, but one thing that you don't understand about the game (And Syndic explained it wrong), is that content is created by one or two people in the alliance(maybe except squad), but usually alliances whether are big or small have only one shotcaller. So when there's CTA ( and you created two opportunities / time zone to do CTA) - every player in the alliance will be lock free on one of their characters and will massup to deny the content. Big alliances won't split into 30 maps now to create content all over the places. It does not work like that. And yet you have done nothing to limit the possibility of massing in Reds or Blues.

So you make it harder for big armies to quick travel. But you have done not a single thing to create objectives so smaller communities could fight for it..
Since you have not done anything to limit possibility for 5 man to conquer the whole world, there's no objectives for smaller guilds/communities/alliances to fight for. Nobody cares, MG/SQUAD gvg teams will steal take the worst possible territory from royals or anglia anyway just because they can, and if you see their launch the attack you don't even show up. The only way to be "B" GvG team is to live in the right time zone, so none of the A teams can kick your ass.

After this change nothing will change compared to what we have today...
It is the same today, either BA comes and deny the content on Anglia to groups like PAX or Archs or not and we can have some 20v20/40 fights with each other. The problem isn't that top40 SQUADS come through the portal in one second. The problem is that they have grown so big, guilds like mine don't do CTA against them because we can't fight those numbers and their quality. This leads us to the only solution > join Red or Blue and have a little bit of that content... Unfortunately your game does not support such fights and you have acknowledged that by implementing limits on the zone.

To conclude...
I feel really disappointed that I have never received any single answer on previously given problems related to alliance size / RvB situation. I am sorry that I am the one telling the harsh truth, but that's how it is.. Things went bad and you haven't done anything to stop that. The time passes.. Nothing changes..

TL;DR
Just FYI, this won't change a single thing from the list of problem I made some time ago. And your game will be in the exact same spot in three months that is now and has been a year ago. But the time passes
I feel really sorry for you that you don't see a chance in your product to be a successful if the communities were down scaled and some tier levels mechanics would have been implemented to disallow top skilled players to have it all and take it from lower tier groups. It's local guilds that introduce the game to new players and yet, you haven't done a single thing to help them survive or expand for the last two years. But you have spent two months to create new player tutorial who have to join a guild anyway and everything will be re-explained again anyway. Good job.

PS. Print that one and hang over your desks, maybe one day you'll realize that when your product reaches the decline phase it's too late to revert the trend. I still believe Albion is currently 100% legit game as the market does not offer anything similar, so with little courage and the right changes it's possible to get back on the growth trend. Go north not south.. Good luck SBI.

During a special transition period of one month, you will be able to move your personal and guild islands to a city of your choice

Each island may only be moved a single time and the move is wasted if not used during this transition period

Would allowing players and guilds to move their island once per season a bit too much? Otherwise, I can see problems in the future.
Example: Guild moves to Bridgewatch for central Anglia. Time passes and now they're planning to move to Cumbria, making Lymhurst/Fort Sterling more attractive, but their island is stuck in Bridgewatch forever.